UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Essays on Corporate Venture Capital, Firm Dynamics, and Aggregate Growth(2022) Liu, Yi; Haltiwanger, John; Stevens, Luminita; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies the impact of corporate venture capital (CVC) on firm dynamics, innovation, and aggregate economic growth. In Chapter 1, I examine whether and how CVC enables funded young firms to rapidly grow, relative to the effect of traditional venture capital (TVC). I formalize the hypothesis that CVC can improve young firm outcomes through demand and/or technology spillovers using a simple model of VC financing and young firm innovation. To test the hypothesis, I assemble a micro-level dataset that links each U.S. VC-funded firm to its funder(s) and subsequent patenting and exit outcomes. To address endogenous investment relationships and to separately identify the causal effects of CVC and TVC in the presence of CVC-TVC syndication, I employ a shift-share research design that predicts both forms of investment at the industry level using the interaction of the initial market shares of different funders and several instruments for funder-specific supply shifts. My estimates reveal that the effect of CVC is as large as the effect of TVC. Moreover, the effect of CVC is found to be stronger when the funded firm is upstream with respect to the CVC funder in the Input-Output matrix and downstream in the patent citation matrix, lending support to the hypothesized demand and technology channels of CVC. Chapter 2 investigates the effect of CVC on one form of strategic payoffs to funding firms: corporate innovation. I construct and analyze a micro-level dataset that links CVC investments to U.S. publicly traded firms and their patenting activities. I track the funding firms before and after starting CVC, in comparison to a group of control firms defined by firm size, age, industry, and prior growth. I find that CVC leads to an increase in patenting rate at the funding firms. Importantly, much of the effect is driven by smaller-sized funding firms, informing the potential relationship between CVC and internal innovation across the firm size distribution. Chapter 3 explores the implications of CVC for aggregate economic outcomes. I develop a growth model featuring CVC and endogenous firm innovation that is consistent with a set of facts on U.S. CVC, including (i) the selection of large and highly innovative firms into making CVC investment and (ii) positive treatment effects associated with CVC on both the funded and funding firms, measured by innovation outcomes. In equilibrium, firms engaged in CVC benefit from positive treatment that makes them innovate more, whereas other firms reduce innovation as they face more intense competition. These forces in turn affect firm selection and the incentives for new entrepreneurship. Quantitative analysis suggests that a higher level of CVC activity leads to an overall increase in aggregate growth, a fall in entry, and a fattening of the firm size distribution at both tails.Item Essays on Firm Growth, Firm Innovation, and International Trade(2020) Jo, Karam; Haltiwanger, John C; Saffie, Felipe; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies the effect of competition on firms' decisions for heterogeneous innovation, and its implication for the recent decline in business dynamism in the U.S. in the context of increasing competitive pressure by foreign firms due to globalization. In Chapter 1, I theoretically investigate the effect of competition on firm innovation by developing a discrete-time endogenous growth model where multi-product firms do two types of innovation subject to friction in technology spillovers. Firms improve their existing products through internal innovation while getting into product markets outside of firms' scope through external innovation. Novel friction I consider is that it takes time to learn others' technology during external innovation, which I denote as an imperfect technology spillover. In contrast to existing models, this friction allows incumbent firms to defend themselves from competitors by building technological barriers through internal innovation. I calibrate the model and run counterfactual exercises of increasing competition, where competition is from either outside of the economy, such as foreign exporters, or domestic firm entry. I find that regardless of the source of competition, domestic incumbent firms i) increase their internal innovation for products they have a technological advantage while decreasing it for products with no technological advantage, and ii) decrease their external innovation. This shift of innovation composition lowers firms' investment in overall innovation in the U.S., where firms are creative in the sense that they do a lot of external innovation. However, increasing competition increases firms' investment in overall innovation in an economy where firms do less external innovation. In an economy with high external innovation costs, firms put very little resource for external innovation even before increasing competition, which implies that there is little room for adjustment. Thus, although external innovation is decreased after an increase in competition, this small reduction is more than offset by increased internal innovation for defensive reasons. These findings highlight the importance of examining the composition of innovation as opposed to overall innovation, and sheds light on the reason for the differential effect of the same competition shock, such as Chinese import competition, on firms' overall innovation across different countries identified by recent studies. In Chapter 2, I empirically test the model predictions derived in Chapter 1, and by building on these findings, I argue that the decline in high-growth firm activity and startup rates in the U.S. is a result of multi-product firms' optimal innovation decisions in response to increasing competitive pressure by foreign firms due to globalization. The three predictions I derive using a simplified three-period version of my model are i) increasing competition makes innovative firms increase their investment in internal innovation for defensive reasons, ii) if innovation intensity is high in the economy, firms do less external innovation, and iii) increasing expected profit makes firms invest more in internal innovation. By using firm-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau integrated with firm-level patent data from the USPTO, I find regression results consistent with the model's predictions. Then, I extend the baseline closed economy model developed in Chapter 1 and build a two-country endogenous growth model to show that increasing competitive pressure by foreign firms contributes to the recent decline in high-growth firm activities and startup rates in the U.S. by inducing innovation-intensive and thus fast-growing firms to invest more in internal innovation for defensive reasons. And because innovative incumbents in each product market are now good at protecting their markets with heightened technological barriers, all types of firms find it difficult to enter others' markets through external innovation. Thus, the startup rate falls, and all firms reduce their investment in external innovation. This shift in innovation cuts the employment growth of innovation-intensive firms, as external innovation makes firms grow faster than internal innovation by requiring firms to hire a new set of workers to produce new products.Item VALUE IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF MANAGERS’ SOCIAL NETWORKS ON THEIR IDEA VALUATION AND IMPLEMENTATION DECISION-MAKING(2019) Lu, Shuye; Bartol, Kathryn M; Venkataramani, Vijaya; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many of employees’ novel ideas often cannot get appreciated or valued by their managers, thus precluding the opportunity for innovation. Drawing on the social-information-processing theory and the situated evaluation perspective, this paper investigates the moderating roles of managers’ social networks in the innovation process of idea evaluation and implementation decision-making. Through a field study with 85 managers in a ceramic company, I found that when managers evaluated product ideas proposed by employees, they manifested a disfavor to novelty. That is, idea novelty had a negative relationship with managers’ perceived value of the focal idea regarding the idea’s potential operational efficiency, likelihood of social support, and strategic fit. However, I also found that both managers’ advice network diversity and friendship network centrality mitigated the negative effect of idea novelty on their perceived value of the proposed product ideas. In addition, I found managers’ perceived value of the idea mediated the relationship between idea novelty and their decisions to implement the idea. Theoretical contributions and empirical strategies are discussed.Item ESSAYS IN ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE(2016) Zhou, Yichen; Cropper, Maureen L; Sweeting, Andrew T; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies technological change in the context of energy and environmental economics. Technology plays a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Chapter 1 estimates a structural model of the car industry that allows for endogenous product characteristics to investigate how gasoline taxes, R&D subsidies and competition affect fuel efficiency and vehicle prices in the medium-run, both through car-makers' decisions to adopt technologies and through their investments in knowledge capital. I use technology adoption and automotive patents data for 1986-2006 to estimate this model. I show that 92% of fuel efficiency improvements between 1986 and 2006 were driven by technology adoption, while the role of knowledge capital is largely to reduce the marginal production costs of fuel-efficient cars. A counterfactual predicts that an additional $1/gallon gasoline tax in 2006 would have increased the technology adoption rate, and raised average fuel efficiency by 0.47 miles/gallon, twice the annual fuel efficiency improvement in 2003-2006. An R&D subsidy that would reduce the marginal cost of knowledge capital by 25% in 2006 would have raised investment in knowledge capital. This subsidy would have raised fuel efficiency only by 0.06 miles/gallon in 2006, but would have increased variable profits by $2.3 billion over all firms that year. Passenger vehicle fuel economy standards in the United States will require substantial improvements in new vehicle fuel economy over the next decade. Economic theory suggests that vehicle manufacturers adopt greater fuel-saving technologies for vehicles with larger market size. Chapter 2 documents a strong connection between market size, measured by sales, and technology adoption. Using variation consumer demographics and purchasing pattern to account for the endogeneity of market size, we find that a 10 percent increase in market size raises vehicle fuel efficiency by 0.3 percent, as compared to a mean improvement of 1.4 percent per year over 1997-2013. Historically, fuel price and demographic-driven market size changes have had large effects on technology adoption. Furthermore, fuel taxes would induce firms to adopt fuel-saving technologies on their most efficient cars, thereby polarizing the fuel efficiency distribution of the new vehicle fleet.Item ProjectION: Investigation Operative Networks(2016) Louie, Adam Wong; White, Brent D; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Corporations and enterprises have embraced the notion of shared experiences and collective workplaces by incorporating coworking places. A great deal of the methodology carries from the studio culture that architecture schools foster as well as think tank culture. Maker spaces and incubator spaces are prime examples of places that engender creative thought and products. This thesis seeks to explore the impact that architecture has on collaborative spaces with a focus on augmenting to their generated learning and design activities. The investigation explores the collaborative design process as a series of interactions between groups of individuals. This involves the impact of technology and its implications on those interactions. The goal of this thesis is not to further the use of a tool or systematic procedure, but to use architecture as a framing device to form places for collaborative processes.Item NETWORK MODELS OF REGIONAL INNOVATION CLUSTERS AND THEIR IMPACT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH(2012) Dempwolf, Christopher Scott; Howland, Marie; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research uses social network analysis to develop models of regional innovation clusters using data from patent applications and other sources. These new models are more detailed than current industry cluster models, and they reveal actual and potential relationships among firms that industry cluster models cannot. The network models can identify specific clusters of firms with high potential for manufacturing job growth where business retention and expansion efforts may be targeted. They can also identify dense clusters of talent where innovation and entrepreneurial efforts may be targeted. Finally, this research measures relationships between network structure at the time of patent application and manufacturing job growth in subsequent years. This will permit the translation of a wide range of network-building activities into the ubiquitous "jobs created" metric. These new tools will help economic developers focus resources on high-yield activities, and measure the results of networking activities more effectively. There are three parts to this research. First, it evaluates the uses of social network analysis (SNA) in planning, reviewing the literature and empirical research where SNA has been used in planning related studies. Second, it presents the construction if innovation network models, covering methodology, data, results and direct applications of the network models themselves. Models are constructed for Pennsylvania between 1990 and 2007. The methodology presents a significant innovation in how networks and geography are modeled, embedding counties in the network as place nodes. The resulting network models more accurately reflect the complex and multiple relationships that firms and inventors have with each other and the locations where they interact. This approach makes it possible to evaluate relationships between innovation and economic growth at a smaller geographic level (counties) than previous research. Third, this research presents an econometric model that evaluates the influence of network structure on county-level manufacturing employment and value added. Network structure is measured in the year of patent application, with manufacturing employment and value added being measured annually for each subsequent year. Differences in network structure generally reflect differences in the level of social capital embedded in different parts of the network. I find that network structure influences manufacturing employment within three years (longer for medical devices and pharmaceuticals) but does not influence value added.Item Transferring social capital from individual to team: An examination of moderators and relationships to innovative performance(2012) Edinger, Suzanne; Tesluk, Paul E; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I explore the relationships between individual social capital, team social capital, and team innovative performance. The association between personal and group social capital is underexplored (Burt, 2000; Kilduff & Krackhardt, 2008), and is important to investigate so that we may improve our knowledge of how social capital transfers from individuals to their teams in ways that promote team innovation. I hope to contribute to the literature on social capital in teams in three important ways. Within team-based settings with high innovation requirements, I first propose that the structural bridging social capital (i.e., ties outside the team) of team members is an important predictor of the team's structural bridging social capital. Second, transferring social capital from the individual to team level, I suggest that a team member's sharing of his/her bridging social capital resources is influenced by relational, cognitive, and task components, including group identification, dyadic trust, team member exchange, and shared vision. Finally, I investigate the role of transactive memory systems and bonding social capital (i.e., ties inside the team) in explaining the relationship between team structural bridging social capital and team innovative performance. Study participants were 263 members of 38 project teams in the merchandising displays division of a large paperboard and packaging manufacturer in the United States. I find that individual bridging social capital predicts team structural bridging social capital. Additionally, psychological identification with team, psychological identification with organization, team member exchange, and shared vision moderate the relationship between individual and team structural social capital. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for social capital and team innovative performance theory and practice.Item How does creativity occur in teams? An empirical test(2010) Jin, Sirkwoo; Shapiro, Debra L; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Organizations benefit when workteams produce more rather than less creativity. What actions in organizations help this to occur - on the part of team leaders and team members? This is the primary question that my dissertation aims to answer. More specifically, I hypothesize that team leaders' behaviors (e.g., transformational, empowering, and boundary-working behaviors) lead to team members' affective and cognitive experiences (e.g., positive group affective tone, team empowerment) that in turn lead to teamwork processes (e.g., information sharing and boundary-spanning among team members) that ultimately lead to team creativity. Thus, my dissertation attempts to explain how and why team creativity occurs. Results from 52 organizational R&D teams suggest support for these hypothesized relationships and for the theoretical model overall. I conclude by discussing my findings' implications for managers and management scholars interested in enhancing team creativity.Item Innovation as Group Process: Hierarchy, Status, and the Dilemma of Participative Leadership(2010) Huey, Wesley Scott; Lucas, Jeffrey W.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Organizations that are characterized by vertical authority structures, where decisions are made and implemented through a clear chain-of-command, are commonly seen as less responsive, less innovative, and less dynamic than organizations that have authority distributed more horizontally. This study takes aim at this presumption by miniaturizing authority structures to the level of the group, where group process theory can be marshaled to predict, measure, and assess outcomes for group innovation in an experimental setting. Using status theory, I propose that hierarchical groups will be more rather than less innovative than egalitarian groups. I conduct an experimental test by manipulating hierarchy in groups instructed to complete a common task, with outcomes mapped to innovative performance. Findings show that hierarchical groups are actually no more, and no less, innovative than egalitarian groups. Irrespective of authority structure, innovation appears to be most likely in groups in which a clear leader emerges who makes others in the group feel like her equal during group interaction. Other findings are presented to explain the apparent no-effect of authority structure on innovation. I will show that status processes advantage each type of group differently with respect to innovation. Hierarchical groups are advantaged by the presence of a clear leader; egalitarian groups are advantaged by the participative interaction that comes naturally to status peers. But the two conditions must occur together to maximize the likelihood for innovation, and this poses a problem for groups who seek to innovate, because status dynamics that promote one of the conditions undercut the status dynamics that promote the other. In egalitarian groups, when authority seekers try to take charge and lead, participative interaction is endangered because members resent the status move. In hierarchical groups, when higher ranking members act participatively, group leadership is contested because others feel empowered to take charge. Each group type therefore faces a dilemma of participative leadership, and because the dilemma is reversed across group types, the net effect of authority structure on innovation is no apparent effect. Implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed.Item RECLAIMING THE EDUCATION DOCTORATE: THREE CASES OF PROCESSES AND ROLES IN INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE(2010) Perry, Jill Alexa; Imig, David G.; Weible, Thomas; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study is to understand how change takes place in schools of education by examining three institutions involved in the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. More specifically, this study will investigate how schools of education and their academic departments adopt, adapt, or reject change efforts and how faculty in a change agent capacity describe and understand their role in this process. The theoretical framework that guided this study is Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation model which examines how innovative ideas are disseminated through an understanding of the innovation, the communication channels through which the innovation is described, the influences of the social system on the process, and the time it takes for a decision to adopt the innovation is made. The methodology employed in this study was an embedded, multiple-case study. The two units of analysis were the school or academic department and the CPED primary investigator. Data was collected in three forms-- documents, interviews, and observations. Case reports for each institution were generated and a cross-case analysis was conducted. Findings reveal that leadership, internal characteristics, external characteristics and change agent roles and strategies are significant in defining and shaping the change process.